Revising the Rough Draft

I received feedback on my rough draft shortly after submitting it. I somewhat knew what was coming ahead in terms of revisions. My professor’s comments and suggestions mostly touched upon the structure and argumentative aspect of my paper. I intentionally structured my rough draft to categorize each school, to develop their stories separately. Previous conversations with my instructors prompted me not to take this route with the final version of my paper. During the writing process of this first draft I struggled to fortify an argument. Instead, I wrote more of a detailed report on each school’s activism during the Vietnam War. I also lacked a well-structured historiography — this is where I talk about some of the sources used in my paper. I recently met with my instructors to evaluate my progress in revising and to review the rough draft. From our conversation we decided it would be ideal if I emphasized the religious dimensions in the radical anti-war activity at Loyola University, Mundelein College, and DePaul University.

The comments on my rough draft and the revelations in my recent meeting have prepared me to continue the revision process. Since receiving verbal and written feedback I have revised my historiography to in a thematic structure, and continue to revise other aspects of my paper. Rather than offering a comprehensive timeline of the anti-war movement on these campuses, I have decided to arrange the paper by themes: moratoriums, teach-ins, ROTC and the draft, etc. I will also need to conduct more research to further stress the religiosity in the activism, and to distinguish the schools from their secular counterparts. I am hoping to explain how the 1960s and 1970s were a turbulent time not just for the United States but also for the Roman Catholic Church. Radical changes from the Second Vatican Council affected American Catholics in the way that they handled social concerns. Catholic universities were not exempt from this transformation. These new developments from the Vatican were demonstrated in the students’ disapproval of the Vietnam War.